I am the founder and CEO of A Sales Guy Inc, I'm a speaker and dropper of mad sales and sales leadership wisdom. I am the finder of the “ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM”. I’ve been helping companies build killer sales teams and crush their numbers for almost 20 years. I’ve been sited in a lot of cool publications (Harvard Business Journal, Forbes, Huffington Post) and people like to put me on lists like; The Top 30 Social Sales Influencers in the World and the Top 50 Sales and Marketing Influencers. My company, A Sales Guy, Inc., via its consulting [A Sales Guy Consulting] and recruiting [A Sales Guy Recruiting] divisions, assists companies in building world class sales organizations. A Sales guy is an energetic group that is crazy about sales and making business better because of it. Hang on, we’re gonna have some fun!

Don't Waste Your Money On A Head of Sales (VP of Sales)

You don’t need a head of sales. You need a badass sales person. You need that guy or gal that can go out into the market and crush it. You need that hired gun who is sophisticated, driven, and creative, with off the charts critical thinking skills who can solve complex selling and business problems. That’s what you need.

Don’t waste one minute or one dollar on a head of sales until you have at least 3 sales people. Hiring right IS your head of sales. Three bad ass, independent sales people will have more impact on your number than any head of sales will ever have.

As a young company the only thing you need to be focused on is the number of new opportunities in, closed deals and revenue. Let your bad asses take care of the rest.

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Totally disagree, especially if you are focused on selling to enterprise. I agree that you don’t need a high powered VP of Sales, but you need to a eager, focused individual who understands the sales process and has the capacity to grow others. Amateurs running sales get what they deserve.

John, not sure what you disagree with. I call out specifically that a bad ass sales person will understand sales process.

Quote: “They will innately build a sales process on the fly, as they will see the commonalities, triggers and buying habits of their prospects while they sell. They capture the process to help them sell.”

As far as a “capacity to grow others” when their is less than 3 sales people selling in the beginning, the need to grow others is too low.

After 3 sales people, the head of sales become exponentially important.

As a former head of sales I can see where you are coming from. Nonetheless, if the MD / CEO has no concept of sales or marketing then you immediately come up against problems. I do agree you do need to focus on selling but unless there is alignment with the rest of the organisation then in my opinion you will face problems further down the track.

Show some examples of what you think is great instead of theorizing about it, you will always have a perfect email and voicemail the way you see it until you put it out there, let me hear and see some of your magic…get in the trenches before judging with your rhetoric, it’s clear you need to spend 3 months cold calling and you will soften up your attack……

Here’s an example of the surprise technique. A sales guy was not having luck with getting many of his prospects on the phone after repeated attempts. So rather than send another email with the same messages he sent one with this picture . . . http://beingpeterpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Hippo-Chasing-Man.jpg and the text that read:

Customer Name,

I have tried to reach out a few times over the past week to go over your lead generation / prospecting strategies. I have not heard back from you and this tells me a few things:

1) You are all set with your current prospecting / lead gen strategies and if that is the case please let me know so I will stop bothering you.

2) You are interested but have not had the time to respond.

3) You are being chased by a hippo and need me to call Animal Control. (this image http://beingpeterpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Hippo-Chasing-Man.jpg was placed here)

Please let me know which one it is as I am beginning to worry..

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

This email generated a 60% response rate. Some were no not interested, others were let’s talk later and others were new opportunities. The point however, is that by using “surprise” he got the attention of his audience and they responded to the tune of 60%. Surprise your audience, provide a knowledge gap or create mystery and you’ll get their attention Jimmy.